1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus and a method of controlling the same, as well as to a storage medium, and more particularly to a printing apparatus that cleans a pressure roller within a fixing device and a method of controlling the printing apparatus, as well as to a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a conventional printing apparatus, a toner image transferred onto a sheet is fixed onto the sheet by a fixing device comprising a heating roller and a pressure roller. Some of the printing apparatuses of this type perform cleaning of the fixing device in response to a user instruction. For example, a cleaning method described below has been disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 2001-22216. In the cleaning method, upon receipt of a cleaning instruction from a user, a printing apparatus feeds only one sheet from a sheet feed cassette and forms an image for cleaning, using C (cyan), M (magenta), Y (yellow), and K (black) toners, and fixes the toner image onto the sheet. Then, the sheet is set in the sheet feed cassette such that the sheet will pass through the fixing device with a surface thereof having the toner image formed thereon facing the pressure roller, and then is fed to pass through the fixing device, to thereby cause the sheet to wipe off toner sticking to the pressure roller from the pressure roller.
Besides the above-described method of cleaning toner stains off the pressure roller by using C, M, Y, and K toners, there has been proposed a method of cleaning toner stains off the pressure roller by using K toner (see e.g. Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-22216). The method using K toner is advantageous in saving user's time and labor, though the method is inferior in cleaning effect to the method using C, M, Y, and K toners.
Further, there has been proposed a cleaning method in which when the remaining amount of toner becomes equal to or smaller than a predetermined amount, a recording sheet is conveyed so as to remove toner from the pressure roller of the fixing device (see e.g. Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. H08-328421).
In a printing apparatus capable of executing the above-mentioned cleaning methods, cleaning effects provided by the respective cleaning methods are different, and the consumption of consumables and complexity in user operation are also different. For this reason, it is difficult for a user to determine which cleaning method is to be executed in what situations.